


Lonely Souls

by TornThorn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A character is starving and doesn't realize it, Angst, Brothers, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abandonment, Dean Has Abandonment Issues, Depression, Ghosts, Loneliness, Mentions of addiction, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 19:27:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8909128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TornThorn/pseuds/TornThorn
Summary: Dean and Sam deal with a ghost who draws in people that feel alone. But this isn't the first one Dean's had to face.





	

_"Come, little children, I'll take thee away… Weep not, poor children, for life is this way, murdering beauty and passions. Hush now, dear children, it must be this way… Rest now, my children, for soon we'll away into the calm and the quiet… Come, little children, the time's come to play here in my garden of shadows."_

* * *

The coroner's reports were driving Sam nuts. As far as the guy could see, five people had simply entered the house, sat down, and refused to eat or drink or sleep or _move_ until they'd just died. And Sam couldn't think of a single thing they'd ever tangled with that killed anyone that way.

But Dean insisted it was a case.

Then he'd told Sam they could both go, but whatever this thing was that Dean knew about but Sam didn't, he also said the younger Winchester probably wouldn't be able to see it.

Which left the tall brother even more confused. He poured through Dad's journal trying to find something, _anything_ , that might explain. There was nothing.

And Dean was being tightlipped and insisting on going in alone.

Sam wanted to tear out his hair, and he already hated this case, and by the time he figured he might as well go along anyway, Dean was already gone.

* * *

Dean wanted to tell Sammy, he did. He just didn't know how the hell he was supposed to explain that one of the best weeks of his life had been while a spirit was convincing him to die. It wasn't a good time.

And now, driving to the house, the memories were creeping up and overwhelming him, vivid and heady, and that little piece inside of him that never stopped feeling abandoned and worthless and so damn lonely rushed out to grab him by the throat.

Pulling over the Impala on the side of the road, he put it in park, leaned his hands and head against the steering wheel, and tried to remember to breathe before he gave up and let the memories fill him completely, hurling him back six years into the past.

_Sammy had been gone for a year…_

* * *

Sammy had been gone for a year, and Dean hated it. He wanted to call or, hell, even drop in and visit the little bitch.

But that would mess up Sam's new life. His _normal_ life.

God, Dean hated that word. "Normal". Winchesters were never "normal". And, sure, maybe sometimes he wished he could've been just another schmoe with a minimum-wage job in a garage, or that he'd actually taken MIT up on the offer they'd sent him after he took the SATs behind Dad's back. Wishing didn't make a damn bit of difference, though, and he was _good_ at the whole hunting thing. He'd been doing it so long he wouldn't really know how to have a "normal" life.

Whatever. Sam was happy and away at Stanford and didn't want Dean in his life, and Dean got that. It hurt, but he got that, so he stayed away.

And Dad was off on a job on the opposite side of the country, trusting Dean to do this one on his own.

Dean was not going to disappoint him.

According to the information he'd managed to scam off the county mortician with a U.S. Marshall's badge, nine individuals had all entered the house and then let themselves starve to death.

Normally, they might have figured the folks were vagrants, homeless people who broke in to an abandoned house and just died on site. Only these weren't bums or hitchhikers. The latest was a businessman who had run a Fortune 500 company. There was a local chick that was the top of her class, the high school's head cheerleader, and her family was loaded. And a twelve-year-old girl who authorities originally believed had been kidnapped. The list went on, and every single victim had been someone with people who cared about them. Someone with a home and family and friends, a place in the community.

The coroner's initial report for a few of them suggested the possibility of drugs. But when the guy had checked their blood, there was no trace of anything that would mess them up. All nine of the people had walked in, sat down in the same room, and waited there until they died.

Made no damn sense.

Dean talked to a couple of people in the neighborhood about the building, trying to figure out if there was any creepy history hidden inside. Nothing. The last woman who'd rented the place had been a junkie and overdosed at a party on the opposite side of town. There were no violent or unexplained deaths on the premises, or in the area.

On the other hand, a few of the neighbors admitted that they had seen someone inside. It sounded like maybe a family or something, because everyone who saw something described the same color of hair and skin. But they saw men and women and children of all different ages. The only thing that stayed the same was the color scheme of the mysterious people.

Far as he knew, there was nothing that worked like that.

He called Dad, called Bobby, called Caleb and Pastor Jim. Following that was a week spent on the computers and in the stacks of the local library. But Dean found nothing. Finally, losing patience, he figured he'd just bite the bullet and make himself bait. There was really nothing else he _could_ do. As night fell over the small Colorado town, he pulled up in front of the tiny ramshackle house, letting the purr of the Impala's engine soothe him.

It was the first time he was really going into danger alone. Before, there had always been Dad or Sammy or another hunter to watch his back. This time, it was just him. There was a moment where that understanding spread up through his chest and throat like fire, burning. He was _alone_. It didn't matter how the job ended, Dean would still be heading back to an empty hotel room with one bed, knowing Sammy wouldn't get in touch and Dad would probably let any call Dean made go to voicemail, then text him coordinates for the next hunt.

Shaking himself out of his maudlin mood, he fought down a sigh. He should be used to it by now. It was the way the world worked for Dean Winchester. He could have all the charm and skill and looks and brains in the world, and none of it made a damn bit of difference because people could instinctively tell that he wasn't worth the effort.

And he needed to start remembering that.

Climbing out of his baby and heading around to the trunk, he grinned ruefully. Maybe he should get a tattoo or something. He sure as hell wouldn't be able to forget then. Two minutes later, he headed in, sawed-off in one hand and a heavy flashlight in the other. The backpack he wore over one shoulder carried extra ammo, along with a big bag of rock salt. Using bolt cutters, he snapped the metal padlock on the back door and cut through the crime scene tape. The door creaked open and Dean stepped carefully inside, strides measured and quiet.

The inside of the house matched the outside, in that it _felt_ old. The place was small, falling apart, with a miniature front porch. The main floor only had a few rooms, all tight and cramped, and the basement had been renovated from what used to be a cellar. Whoever owned the place had been trying to get it rented out since the last renter had overdosed, but no one was interested. Who knew when the water or electricity had worked?

Scanning the whole house took less than ten minutes, even taking it slow. The last spot was barely a room, and had probably been a cupboard or closet at some point. It was down in the basement with a tiny window right near the top of the wall that peaked into a window well. There was a bed frame shoved into the corner, small enough that it was probably meant for a child, and when the beam from the flashlight swept over it, someone was suddenly there.

Jumping back, Dean brought up the shotgun and growled, ready to blast the thing. His Dad had hammered the fact into his head that things that looked like children weren't to be trusted.

Still, even with the gun pointed threateningly at him, the boy sat, quiet and unmoving.

Kid looked maybe ten (Ten. That was the age that Dean really thought that Sam had still trusted him to keep them safe. Then his brother got a little older, and that unwavering belief was as dead as the things they hunted.), wearing worn overalls and a faded green t-shirt, with blond hair and pale skin. His round face housed a sharp nose and cupid's bow mouth, along with the biggest brown eyes Dean had ever seen. And the sadness in those eyes-

Dean knew better. That didn't stop him from putting up the gun and slowly stepping closer, still wary. "You okay, kiddo?"

Shaking his head, the boy opened his mouth and whispered, "I don't wanna be alone anymore."

That hit Dean where it hurt, and he could feel his mind getting hazy, feel all the repressed emotions overwhelming him like a tidal wave, dragging him under. Lonely. The kid was just lonely. And, god, Dean got that. After all, the only thing he knew better than loneliness was guilt. Because being alone was no one's fault but his. His whole head was full of memories of people walking away or turning there backs on him. Mom was long gone in the fire. She hadn't meant to leave, but she did. Dad was alive and didn't care where Dean was, so long as his son could hunt down and kill the different monsters that crept around in the dark. Caleb had his own son that kept him busy, and he cared about Dean. Still, Dean knew that there was a reason Caleb didn't call Dean to check up on him anymore. Pastor Jim was a good guy, but it was his local flock that got the attention and protection and care. Then there was Bobby, always inviting Dean to come around and spend a couple of days off, tooling around the junkyard. Or at least, he used to. Sooner or later, everyone decided they were done with the elder Winchester brother. Even chicks only kept him around for a weekend at most. After that, he was disposable. But Sammy… Dean had hoped and prayed for years that he would still be enough to keep his baby brother around, because he didn't want to be anymore alone then he already felt.

And then, there it was, the memory bursting up like a dragon coming to eat him. He was back in that moment when he had dropped Sammy off at the bus station, made sure the bitch had enough money for the ride to California, covertly slipping over $6,000 he had made hustling poker and pool in the past few weeks into his brother's bag. Then Sam was walking away, without a hug or anything, just a swift, bright smile and a quick goodbye. Dean stared, watching every step, feeling like his throat was being ripped out and something had reached in with claws, digging through ribs and lungs and squeezing his heart, tearing it to pieces. The gait Sam had taken was jaunty, screaming " _free!_ ", and he hadn't looked back once. The tall, strong, smart guy Dean had practically raised had been so eager to get away from him that Sam hadn't even waved goodbye or glanced out the window toward Dean when he climbed up the vehicle's steps and took a seat. His focus was all ahead, and Dean was the past, meant to be left behind and never spoken of again.

There was a voice at the back of the hunter's head, screaming that he had to leave, had to find some bones, had to finish the job.

But seeing the boy, thin arms wrapped around fragile legs, chin propped on knees, looking so damn tired and abandoned, Dean couldn't walk away.

So he sat down on the bed next to the kid, reaching out to hold him, and was shocked when, for a few moments, the spirit became solid enough to lean into Dean's embrace. Then the feel of soft denim and cotton, and a small, heavy weight on his shoulder, and a trembling frame wrapped up in his arms vanished, the momentarily corporeal form fading away to swirling cold mist.

Dropping his shoulders and head back against the rough stone wall, he sighed and felt himself falling even deeper into his personal pain. "I'll stay, kid. You won't be alone anymore."

"You promise?" came the barely-there plea, accompanied by a tiny, chilled breeze.

Shifting to get more comfortable, Dean nodded. "I promise. No one should be alone."

* * *

It was Hour 2 in the house when he finally asked, "Why are you still here?"

The kid turned and smiled, lit up with joy as he had been since Dean joined him. "Mommy went out and didn't come back. I'm waiting."

Trying to think, trying to remember, he tilted his head. "You lived here? With your mom?"

"Yeah. Only she left a lot, 'cause she had lots of friends who wanted to play with her," nodded the boy.

"Oh. Okay."

And they fell back into silence, comforted by simply knowing there was someone else there.

* * *

On Hour 3, Dean had fallen asleep for a few minutes before a splash of cold, like a bucket of water, dumped over him and he woke up gasping. For a moment, his mind was crystal clear, and the pieces clicked.

Turning to the ghost who had touched him, woken him up, he blurted out, "Your mom was the junkie, Mandy Welch!"

Shrinking back, nodding his small head slowly, the boy stared at Dean with scared eyes. "Are you going to leave now?"

Unaware that his eyes were getting distant and his thoughts were disappearing back behind the layers of emotion, he shook his head firmly. "No way, kiddo. I'm staying right here, with you. I promised, didn't I?"

The smile that met those words was far away and disappointed. "That's what everyone says. But they always leave."

"Well, I won't," Dean reassured him, retaking his normal spot against the wall.

And the light was back in those big brown eyes.

* * *

When Hour 5 arrived, Dean was dizzy and he couldn't figure out why. And his whole body felt heavy. It made no sense. This time, when he found his eyes closing, he didn't fight off the exhaustion that dropped like a warm blanket. He let go and drifted.

And when he woke, the energy from the dream, from the flashes of the nine victims and their files, slammed into him. They'd all sat down on this exact bed and waited, doing nothing until they died. Why? _Why?_ The question had plagued him before he came, and now it all made perfect sense.

Slowly, he twisted to take in the spirit at his side. He focused and the illusion his own lonely mind had created melted away to reveal a girl, maybe five-years-old, with messy blonde hair. The face and eyes were still the same, but the child was female, and he had gotten her age wrong and he suddenly understood.

"They don't see you, do they?" he asked.

Her lip trembled and those expressive brown eyes filled with tears, while she vehemently shook her head. "No. They see somebody, somebody that's not me. The last man, he wanted to kiss me all the time but I wouldn't let him. He said I was pretty and that I looked like his wife."

"Ellen Traynor," murmured Dean. "That guy, Robert, his wife died a couple years ago. Breast cancer. But she was blonde too." Turning his attention back to the ghost, he leaned down and asked, "Who else?"

The tears were slipping down those white cheeks now, vanishing before they could drip from her chin. "Emily wanted me to be her little sister."

Emily. That was the name of the twelve-year-old.

"And the old woman-" That had to be Patti Savage, who had been in her eighties. "-she said I was a good boy who didn't act like the other mean boys my age. And Mary-" Mary Higgs, 47, unable to have children. "-hugged me and rocked me and talked baby talk to me. But the boys didn't care. They both talked a lot." Those were probably Joshua Stokes and Nate Carmichael. Both teenagers, Dean had guessed Nate was gay and had been scared to tell anyone. Joshua, on the other hand, was the leader of the school swim team and seemed to have a charmed life. Both had probably just seen the ghost as she really was, not caring _who_ listened, so long as someone did.

"The girl in the blue and white with the pretty hair liked to talk, too. She said her daddy was mean and her mommy didn't care and she didn't want to tell her friends 'cause they all had perfect parents, so she said I was her best friend now." Blue and white. The cheerleading outfit Karen Thomas had been found in was blue and white. "Gary missed his daddy a lot, and he made me promise we'd go fishing someday." Gareth Weisenheimer had been 30, a car salesman whose father left when he was young, and apparently had had daddy issues. "But the fat girl was the nicest and she only wanted to talk about boys, and she called me Nana a lot." The third victim, Cathy Jones, had been heavy-set and according to the mom, her favorite person in the world had been the grandmother who passed away a year before Cathy's death.

A whimper drew him out of his head and back to the spirit. "They all said they'd stay here with me, but they didn't. I did something bad, didn't I? That's why they went away."

And Dean wanted to cry along with this lost child. "No, sweetheart. They left because they died. They couldn't stay here anymore."

"But I died too!" she protested in a wail. "I didn't go, so why won't they stay?"

"Oh, kiddo," Dean ran a hand over her insubstantial hair and ducked down to meet her eyes. "Look at me, baby girl. I know you didn't mean to, but you're hurting people. They come here when they get lonely because you're lonely too, but then they can't leave. And they're alive, and they need to eat and sleep, and they want so much to stay right here with you that they don't, so they die."

Her tiny mouth dropped open wide. "I made them die?"

"Yeah," Dean nodded, trying to be gentle as he added, "You didn't do it on purpose, though."

She banged her small fists against those knobby knees, sadness having transitioned quickly into anger. "I hurt them! I made them die!" The rage that rose was primal, filling the air, making the room feel like a furnace and the arctic all at once, while the glass on the window shook in its frame and the bed began to slide around as the door slammed open and shut.

"Wait," Dean protested. "Wait!"

It was too late. Her face started to twist and shudder, and eyes and mouth and nose turned into gaping black holes like a skull, and she was off the bed and screaming.

"Shit!"

He was running for the door, and it was already too late. Body lifting off the floor, he felt himself fly back, slamming into the wall, the breathe escaping with a strangled gasp. Black spots were dancing around the room, growing when he felt the pressure press harder and harder across his chest, ribs creaking and he couldn't take in any air.

"S… _stop_."

The single word was barely there, escaping in a flat hiss of sound, and somehow it got through. She was curling up on herself, flashing back into a corner like some kind of cheesy movie effect, pulling down and crying. " _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ …"

And he was falling and she was gone.

Stumbling back to his feet, poking at his torso and discovering nothing had broken, he gathered up his things and carefully walked back up the stairs and out of the house.

* * *

Five days. It hadn't been five hours, it had been five _days_ that he was inside that damn room.

He had driven back to the hotel (although the hunter had no clue how, since his sight had been blurry and everything was vaguely confusing) and discovered that he needed to pay again if he wanted his room back, since three days was all he'd originally rented it for. When Dean stared at the clerk like he was crazy, the guy rolled his eyes and said no one cared what drugs the man was taking, so long as his money kept coming.

Lying back on the bed, Dean stared at the weather man on the tv, only half-awake. He had been down there with the ghost for five whole days. And he didn't know.

Thinking back, all he'd been aware of the entire time was the kid. There were no memories of the light changing in the room or days passing. All there was was the two of them, sitting, grateful to have someone who understood, grateful to not be alone anymore. He'd nearly died. It only took one look in the mirror when he headed to the bathroom for a shower to see that he had wasted away, and since the moment he had stepped out of the house, a headache had been pounding at the inside of his skull, seeming to want to split his head open.

He was dehydrated and starving, had full-on collapsed to sit in the shower, leaning his head against the tiled wall and let the water slice over him, tilting up his face to drink. Dragging himself out after close to two hours had been a trial, and his vision had been sketchy while he tried to make it to the bed. Finally feeling his knees hit the edge, he planted facedown, shaky hand reaching for the bedside phone.

It took five tries to push the right button, and a promise to give the night clerk $100 cash if the guy would call a pizza place and order a large meat lovers to be delivered to Dean's room.

Now, as he watched the current news flicker across the screen, he chomped down on another piece of the greasy food. It probably wasn't the best choice after no food for five days, but he needed his energy back, and he needed to get his brain working. With each bite, the haziness faded, and Dean could finally start to think. Still weak on his feet, he grabbed the pen and notepad on the side table and started writing.

_Attracts lonely people, makes them want to stay._

_Same hair, skin, eyes, but everything else about appearance can shift._

_Real kid – girl, 5 or 6, mom was last renter/junkie, Mandy Welch. Did anyone know she had a kid? Did the girl just sit and wait for her deadbeat mom to come back, and died that way?_

_Are there other spirits like this? How come no hunters know anything? Maybe none of them have ever actually_ _seen_ _these kinds of ghosts cuz they're not lonely? Or they stay and die if they do? Might make sense. Call Dad and-_

"Shit. Dad." Yanking his cell out of the jacket he'd tossed over the end of the bed, he flipped it open. It was dead.

He considered crawling across the room and out the door to find his duffel. He was pretty sure that was where the charger had been dumped. Then he gave up and reached for the motel phone again.

Dialing the familiar number, he waited as it rang and rang and rang, finally beeping as it switched over to voicemail.

" _If you want a call back, leave a message, with_ details," growled his father's gruff voice.

Sighing, Dean dropped back against the bed again. "Hey, Dad. It's me. I'm alive. The job ended up a little more complicated than we thought, but I should be done by the end of the week. And I forgot to charge my cell, so it's dead. I'm calling using the motel landline. Sorry. So. …um, how're you? Did you finish up the salt-n-burn in Arkansas? Okay, uh, love you."

Hanging up, Dean rubbed at his face. Of course Dad hadn't picked up a call from an unfamiliar number. Messages were better than answering when you didn't recognize the caller, considering the amount of credit card fraud they got up to. Still, for just a second he let himself wish, like a little kid again, that he could hear his dad promising that everything was gonna be okay.

Shaking off the stupidly sentimental hope, he grabbed up the paper and writing utensil again, biting on the end of the pen before returning to his scribbling.

_Need to find kid's name. County records? See what they've got on Mandy Welch. Did she move to town and didn't let her daughter outside, or something? And how the hell did neighbors not know there was a kid in there? Girl didn't look old enough to be in school, so probably no record of enrollment. Did Welch have family? Where the hell is the kid's dad in all this?_

Finally, the exhaustion was too much, and he let himself sink into the mattress, not even taking the effort to push anything off the bed or get under the covers. He simply told his body to _freaking relax already_ and allowed his mind to drift, and he was out.

* * *

Three days scoring county records and re-interviewing neighbors before Dean found a solid lead.

Mandy Welch was actually Mandolin McGregor, and had moved into the state two years before her death. And when he called the police from the city she had originally lived in, they told the sad story of a girl barely out of high school whose boyfriend got her pregnant and then abandoned her. Mandy had started taking drugs and drinking, and the little girl that was eventually born, named Sunny, had a few minor mental defects caused by the mother's substance abuse.

The pair had tried living with Mandy's mother, Constance McGregor, but the woman had thrown her daughter out when she realized the girl was still taking drugs. Filing the paperwork to be become her grandbaby's legal guardian, Constance had not been prepared for Mandy to break in and steal her own child. The disappearance of Mandy with Sunny had caused Constance to have a heart attack, and she was dead within the week.

Mandy had run with Sunny all the way to Colorado, even going so far as to legally change her last name during a stopover in Idaho. But that was where the records of the kid had ended. When she arrived in town, Mandy had never spoken of a daughter, and no one ever saw the girl. And so when Mandy had overdosed, nobody had known there was a little girl, completely dependent on her mother to survive, that had sat down in her bedroom waiting until she died.

The only thing that Dean didn't get was that, with all the times the police had been through that house finding the victims' corpses, how come they never found the kid's?

Sunny had had a rough life, and Dean wasn't about to deny that. But he knew what he had to do. And that meant going back to the house and finding the missing body.

* * *

It was the dark that was screwing him up. He kept thinking he'd seen her, out of the corner of his, or sensed something cold right behind him. Every time he spun to look, though, there was nothing there.

Until he reached the room in the basement.

And there she was again, perched on the bed. This time, though, her face was still stuck in that splash of black and white that looked like a skull, and she was angry. The temperature was barely above freezing and his body was already fighting off the shivers.

"You shouldn't've come back. I don't want you here."

Reaching out in a calming gesture, he stepped closer and spoke. "Your name's Sunny, right? And your birthday's in March."

The cold in the room began to dissipate at his words, and she tilted her head. "March 25th. How'd you know?"

"Listen, kiddo, I bet you don't remember her, but you've got a grandma that loves you. Tons."

The scary features scattered and were replaced by the original little girl, hope on her face. "Really?"

Nodding decisively, Dean continued, "Yeah. Only, she died when you were just a baby."

Shadows at the edge of the room started to creep up, growing, and the ghost's mouth turned down.

"Wait, hear me out, sweetheart!" he protested, and she took a deep breath while the dark retreated, and nodded. Crouching to her height, he pulled the bottle of lighter fluid and a salt canister out of his bag. "She's waiting for you, okay? If we do this, you won't be stuck here anymore. You can leave, go to the place she's already at. Does that sound good?"

Dark eyes guileless, she stared. "Do you promise?"

Swallowing around the lump in his throat, praying with all his heart that this promise, at least, wouldn't get broken, he smiled. "I promise. Sunny, I need you to tell me where your bones are."

There was a momentary hesitation, before she grinned back, skipping over to the door and gesturing him through. "Okay."

And when he finally found the depressing, shriveled body hidden in one of the lowest kitchen cupboards, he did his best not to cry. Shaking out the salt and squirting the accelerant, he dug in his pocket and brought out the lighter, flicking it open. For a moment, he didn't move, glaring down at the disposable plastic tool, hating the world. Then a cold little hand slipped into his right and he turned.

Her smile was equally sad and bright, as though she instinctively knew his promise about the afterlife might be a crock of shit. And it was accepting. "It's okay, mister. I wanna see my grandma. Okay?"

Biting his lip, he nodded, than flicked the lighter until the spark caught and lit up into a flame. One last glance, one last moment, until he tossed it and the child's form went up in a red and yellow blaze.

The spirit was still smiling, its hand clasped in his, when the same colors appeared, devouring what was left of the little girl.

He stayed until the fire burnt out.

* * *

This time, Dean knew how to handle it.

He pushed himself to stop remembering, shoved his mind back into the present, and gathered what he needed.

Walking into the house, he went straight to the bedroom where the bodies had been found and waited. When the fifteen-year-old boy's ghost appeared, Dean's expression was soft and understanding.

"Hey there. Dylan, right?"

The spirit nodded.

"My name's Dean. And I wanna help you."

"You can't," the see-through teen responded, eyes on the floor. "I'm dead."

"Yeah." Shrugging, the hunter smiled. "But there's more to death than _this_ ," he added, gesturing to the silent, empty house. "Your uncle, Phil, he used to take you out to the zoo, didn't he?"

A nod.

"But he died. And you felt so alone. Years passed, and people just kept leaving. No one stayed, no one cared, and you were still so freaking alone," Dean continued, voice tight with sympathy. "Even after you died, there were all these folks who came and promised they would stay with you. Folks just as lonely. But none of them stuck around. Sooner or later, they all died, and they didn't stay like you had, they were just gone."

"How-?" Dylan's ghost asked.

Dean gave the boy the same smile that little Sunny had worn all those years ago when the hunter was burning her bones. " 'Cause you're not the first one I've helped. 'Cause I know how much it hurts. 'Cause I almost _was_ you. Take your pick. Either way, you can see Phil again. And believe me, I know how cliché this is gonna sound but, can you see a light?"

After a moment, the kid's eyes fixed on something and his head cocked to the side. "Yeah. I've just been ignoring it."

"Well quit it, moron," laughed Dean. "That's the afterlife. And if you head into that light, your uncle's gonna be there, waiting."

"Really?"

The hope, the plea to have someone there who loved him, who wanted to be with him, was bright on the teen's face.

"Really. Now get goin', kid."

As the ghost vanished, and Dean made a mental note to dig up the kid's grave and salt-n-burn the bones just to be sure, the older Winchester watched, a silent witness.

* * *

What he would never know was that Sam had been outside, watching and listening through the window, and had heard his strong, brave big brother admit that he he could have _been_ the ghost of a suicidal kid.

He would never know, because they were Winchesters, and Winchesters didn't talk about it. No matter how lonely they got.

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted to ff.net


End file.
